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Neo-feminism vs. Neutrality

Personally I don’t even believe in feminism as a concept or philosophy. If you are a female who does not believe in gender equality, then I would be forced to seriously question your entire morality and set of values.

This being said, on the contrary, I would however still refer to myself as a feminist. There are still far too many sexist agendas which discriminate against women, that are simply just accepted in our society. For example, rape culture, which has received a lot of media exposure in recent years.

We still have a long way to go. And I fear we are going completely the wrong way about tackling it. Just recently I have read several articles which refer to a neutrality in some form. First of all we had, ‘pan-sexuality’ – the belief that one has no sexuality. I next heard about ‘gender neutrality’. I understand these neutralities are being formed as a positive action, they are there to decrease discrimination and gender stereotypes, archetypal gender roles etc.

Now just yesterday I read an article which was stating that body positivity is a farce. We should have ‘body neutrality’ as an alternative. That it causes us to put immense pressure on ourselves to always feel positive, and naturally everyone has insecure days.

But I feel like ‘positivity’ is being misconstrued completely, I believe in the power of positivity. Now as cliche as it may sound, staying positive and believing things will get better, has aided me through some of the toughest times of my life. For one to assume that means you aren’t allowed a bad day, would be naive, no?

Staying positive is a means to help people believe in themselves. It comes from a good place, and I just feel like, why must we always criticise? For example, body positivity is encouraged because of body shaming. And now positivity is being criticised because of being positive?

This is just one fundamental example, but it relates to my initial point about neutrality. Why can’t we accept things for what they are? Biologically there are differences between females and males. That, in no way shape or form justifies any type of inequality or discrimination. But there are clear differences, no one can deny the fact.

It’s awesome to write counterintuitive articles, it’s often something I enjoy doing myself. Criticism is how we learn, challenging the norms is a crucial part of being a competent journalist. Conforming to your role as the fourth estate within society. But some of these articles, and ‘neutralities’ are just scraping the barrel now.